grub-install fails during d-i installation when /boot/grub is located on md raid device

[Max Bowsher]

I have experienced a failure to install Ubuntu natty, using the d-i (alternate, not ubiquity) installer.

The actual failure occurs when the installer executes grub-install. Debugging a bit shows that the actual failing command is "grub-probe -t fs /boot/grub". Debugging a bit more shows that /boot/grub is in my situation, located on /dev/md0, and the failure involves grub-probe attempting to execute /dev/md/0 (note: md/0, not md0) which does not exist during the installer run.

A further point of interest found by looking into the grub code is that grub only ends up looking for md/0 rather than md0 if the array is using a version 1 md superblock - i.e. my problem is worked around by using a version 0.90 md superblock.

But, there seems to be some other wrinkle involved that I have not yet diagnosed, as the above problems were experienced on real hardware, using a partman-auto-raid recipe, whilst attempting a kvm test install without the preseed resulted in the md/0 symlink being created. More info to come...

Other notes - the following bugs may be related to some degree:
bug 713874
bug 789226
bug 701351

[pcanham (paulcanham)]

Also seeing this issue as well but only when i try and preseed the disk partitions, if i manually enter in the partitions things work OK

d-i partman-auto/disk string /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
d-i partman-auto/expert_recipe string multiraid :: 989999 9899999 989999 raid $primary{ } $bootable{ } method{ raid } . 1 1 1 raid method{ biosgrub } . 10000 10000 10000 raid method{ raid } .
d-i partman-auto-raid/recipe string 1 2 0 ext4 / /dev/sda1#/dev/sdb1 . 1 2 0 swap - /dev/sda5#/dev/sdb5 . 1 2 0 ext4 /app1 /dev/sdc1#/dev/sdd1 .
d-i partman-basicfilesystems/mountoptions multiselect noatime
d-i mdadm/boot_degraded boolean true
d-i partman-md/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-partitioning/confirm_write_new_label boolean true
d-i partman/choose_partition select finish
d-i partman/confirm boolean true
d-i partman-md/confirm_nooverwrite true

Following Bug #743136 looks simular so could be a regression some where.

Work around is to drop into the shell and run the following

chroot /target
ln -s /dev/md0 /dev/md/0
ln -s /dev/md1 /dev/md/1
ln -s /dev/md2 /dev/md/2
grub-install /dev/sda
grub-install /dev/sdb

[pcanham (paulcanham)]

Linking mdadm to this report issue could be with this than grub

[pcanham (paulcanham)]

Architecture: amd64
BootDmesg: (Nothing has been logged yet.)
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
MDadmExamine.dev.sda: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sda'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda.
MDadmExamine.dev.sda1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sda1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sda3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sda3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdb: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdb'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdb1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdb1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdb3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdb3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc5: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc5'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc5.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd5: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd5'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd5.
Package: mdadm 3.1.4-1+8efb9d1ubuntu4.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCpuinfo: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/cpuinfo'
ProcEnviron: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/7461/environ'
ProcInterrupts: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/interrupts'
ProcKernelCmdLine: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/cmdline'
ProcMDstat: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/mdstat'
ProcModules: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/modules'
ProcMounts: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/mounts'
ProcPartitions: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/proc/partitions'
Tags: natty natty
UdevDb:

UdevLog: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/log/udev'
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups:

etc.blkid.tab: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/blkid.tab'

[pcanham (paulcanham)]

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[pcanham (paulcanham)]

For some reason cant delete old comments re-running apport-cli which this time should have a working /procs

[pcanham (paulcanham)]

Architecture: amd64
BootDmesg: (Nothing has been logged yet.)
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
MDadmExamine.dev.sda: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sda'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda.
MDadmExamine.dev.sda1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sda1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sda3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sda3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdb: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdb'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdb1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdb1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdb3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdb3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdc5: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdc5'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdc5.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd1: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd1'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd1.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd3: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd3'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd3.
MDadmExamine.dev.sdd5: Error: command ['/sbin/mdadm', '-E', '/dev/sdd5'] failed with exit code 1: mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdd5.
NonfreeKernelModules: hfsplus hfs raid1 xfs exportfs reiserfs jfs btrfs zlib_deflate libcrc32c ntfs vfat fat vga16fb vgastate usbhid hid usb_storage igb dca
Package: mdadm 3.1.4-1+8efb9d1ubuntu4.1
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/sh
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=C.UTF-8
 LANGUAGE=en_US:
ProcKernelCmdLine: locale=en_US hostname=hostname console-setup/ask-detect=false keyboard-configuration/layoutcode=us netcfg/choose_interface=eth0 domain=red.7sys.net url=http://10.1.31.25/netinstall/11.04/supermicro_intelraid-pcanham.cfg vga=normal initrd=ubuntu-installer/amd64/initrd.gz -- quiet DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 BOOT_IMAGE=ubuntu-installer/amd64/linux
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
ProcVersionSignature_: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Tags: natty natty
UdevDb:

UdevLog: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/log/udev'
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups:

etc.blkid.tab: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/blkid.tab'

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[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This issue has sat incomplete for more than 60 days now. I'm going to close it as invalid. Please feel free re-open if this is still an issue for you. Thank you.